'On the road again' after the heat of last week and a tummy bug, although unlike Willie Nelson there's no band of jolly vagabonds to enliven the journey, even if 'the life I love' is indeed partly 'making music with my friends'. Yes, I know, that's the second country music reference in three posts. Enough already.
Ecton's a busy little village. The council tip is down towards the Nene, on the right after the bend, and the A45's noise is intrusive when the wind's from the south or the west. I walk down the single long main street past John Palmer's 18thC school and the little Free Chapel where Stephen Meakins used to host lovely and evocative Christmas concerts with the Laurence Lloyd Singers, later The Northampton Chamber Choir. I walk up the path following the signs to 'The Village Hall and Ecton Cricket Club'. I find the hall, and am eyed suspiciously by a lady coming out of the Play Group, but there's only a rough field where I think I once played cricket against the village team. I remember scoring a forty-odd that was worth at least half as much again. An absolutely clubbed shot along the ground into the lush grass would stop dead after about thirty yards. One run instead of four.
Ironically, because of the proximity of the council refuse facility, there's a lot of fly-tipping as the lane nears the A45, including what looks like a load of old asbestos. Watched by a curious buzzard, I climb over another pile of dumped rubbish and follow the old way across the flood plain towards the river. On the far bank above the mill is the church of St. Peter, Cogenhoe, pronounced 'Cook-know' to avoid betraying your non-local origins, or if you want to be really Old Skool, 'Cook-nuh'.
Outside the church someone is preparing to cut the grass. It's Eddie Smith, the vicar. He has responsibility for four churches in his benefice, and since two of them are Little and Great Houghton he's already had a card from me, so he knows the story. He asks me if I'd like to look inside St. Peter's. Of course I say yes please, and we chat briefly while he dismantles a projector screen left from yesterday's service. The church is light and airy, helped by the pale wood and pinky upholstery of the semicircles of chairs. Looking back from the altar, the bell tower is a high open inspiration. We agree that if the Puritans were good for anything it was leaving us whitewashed walls in this kind of building. Eddie isn't keen on what the Victorians bequeathed us in terms of the conventions of church architecture. I suppose I think of Liverpool's Anglican cathedral when he says that. Maybe Guildford too. But back to the last but one post: how do you signpost 'Hello we're Christians. Please come inside and see what we're doing'? The Pokémon Go craze is bringing mostly young people to look at the Weston Favell church, and apparently to Peterborough Cathedral too, but only because they're instantly recognisable. It's another matter entirely of course, what we should do with this unexpected windfall of interest.
I mention to Eddie that Sue and I had worshipped at the Cathedral yesterday, and had been gobsmacked to trip over the immediate consequences of a financial crisis there. Two statements were read: one from Charles Taylor, the Dean, announcing his resignation, and the other from the Bishop, saying that he was going to make a Visitation, and would reserve to himself the powers thereby entailed. We don't go to our diocesan Mother Church very often, but I shall miss the Dean's humour. Occasionally he could get it very wrong, but he had an entertaining way with the Gospel.
Down the accurately named 'Short Lane' is Cogenhoe's Pocket Park. The pond has been deepened and we are advised by a notice not to fall in. I first came across the little park many years ago when the rather sad headteacher of the school at which I then taught conceived the notion that the entire school should go on a ramble at the dog-end of the summer term. Amid many grumbles from the staff as well as the kids we all set off from the Billing Road on a sticky July day and made it as far as the fields at the back of Cogenhoe and the set of stone steps in the wood known as 'Jacob's Ladder' to the locals. It was not an experiment that was ever repeated.
On the way up to Brafield I skirt some wheat fields, now yellow with a tinge of green around their fringes. There seem to be a great number of dog-walkers in Brafield. All the dogs are small and all are friendly. Their humans and I share that this is a perfect day for a stroll - sunny, dry, but not too warm. So numerous are the pooches, I wonder if this is a sort of Crufts on the move, but no, this is Monday morning and the dogs and owners are just working off the weekend's excess. St. Laurence's in the Lower End of the village is shut, so after a pause I head off to Denton across more fields of wheat, into which the good farmers have cut appropriate swathes to clearly mark the paths.
Approaching Denton from this side, you can just see the church tower nestled down in the dip where most of the village lies. I'm really hoping it will be open, because I know that it's filled with murals by the celebrated Northampton artist Henry Bird. The safety curtain at the Royal Theatre is perhaps his best known public work, shining out in amused fashion at ice-cream guzzlers and coffee slurpers during the intervals. I've seen the murals here once before, when I was inveigled into the annual Historic Churches Bike Ride, but that was before I started to take anything of an interest in the visual arts. I'm anticipating that I'll appreciate them differently and better now. But disappointment awaits. St. Margaret's of Antioch's is shut too, so I shall have to come back another time.
And who, you may be asking, was St. Margaret of Antioch? (No, I didn't know either!) Well, if she existed at all - at least one fifth century pope thought she was apocryphal - she died in 304 after persecution in her native Turkey. She's considered by some to be the patron saint of pregnancy. The best story about her is that she was swallowed by an angry Satan who came to her in the form of a dragon. The cross she was wearing irritated the dragon's stomach, so Margaret was spat out. In the Orthodox churches she's St. Marina, and there are 250 churches dedicated to her in the UK, including most famously, St. Margaret's Westminster.
I love the middle of Denton, and the best place to see it is from the deck of the Red Lion pub, which serves Luscombe's delicious ginger beer. As I sit and watch the world go by, four young women cheerfully carry enormous packs up the Northampton road, presumably on a D of E gold expedition. Either that, or they're masochists.
Via the 'Paradise Ponds' of the hamlet of Chadstone (presumably ancient fishponds serving a long-extinct monastic foundation, or perhaps the big house itself) I walk on past the long view of Castle Ashby and up the drive to its tea-room. We're season ticket holders here, and regard it as our other back garden, with an army of people to keep the plants and arboretum in perfect order, and meerkats to talk to during the summer. In winter the 'children's farm' (who are they kidding?) is closed, and we have to shout to the meerkats from a distance to reassure them all is well with the outside world.
As Sue discovered when she organised a Mothers Union outing to the tea-room earlier in the year, there are wrinkles about freedom of access around Castle Ashby. If you pay the appropriate fee you can get to the gardens and the church of St. Mary Magdalene from the tea-room. If you want to get to the church from the village side and without paying, it appears that with a bit of 'brass neck' you can walk across the façade of the house to do so - as the parishioners presumably do. But if you're a 'forriner' you may have to prove your holy intent to the house security staff, particularly if you're infirm enough to need vehicular assistance - Lord Northampton doesn't like anyone spoiling his view. Though, as Sue has proved, a small coach can make it to the church's car park with -ooh - at least a millimetre's clearance on either side.
The ecclesiastical geography around Castle Ashby explains too well for whom the church here once existed, and it never was for the working people or even the clergy. At Chadstone there's a large Old Rectory, but no church. Was there ever one there? Or has it been 'disappeared'? On holiday a couple of years ago near Alnwick in the North East, we stayed in a house whose owner had once arranged for a whole village to be moved lock, stock and fishing tackle to ease the building of his stately pile. There are examples of such clearances in Northamptonshire too. On the plus side, there's sufficient detritus on the floor of St. Mary Magdalene's to suggest that some of the many tourist visitors to the house make it inside the church. It's much better cared-for now than it used to be. It feels welcoming and friendly in the sunshine.
A late 19thC cleric was sadly killed in a bicycle accident on the road from Castle Ashby to Whiston in the course of his duties. I negotiate the road safely, although the rise of the wold on the approach to the church of St. Mary the Virgin turns out to be more substantial on foot than it is from the insulated womb of the German Car. A path veers away from the road towards the east wall of the church grounds. There I meet Nina with her children and a friend as they pick their way round the edge of a field of maturing (decaying!) rapeseed, and once we're over the stile and in the churchyard, I meet Nina's mum, Jean, who's the churchwarden at the elegant Whiston church (1534). Jean knew lovely Olive Thompson, one of our elderly parishioners in Weston Favell, who died earlier in the year. They'd volunteered together at the Cynthia Spencer Hospice. We agree that Olive was one of the sweetest and twinkliest people we'd ever met, and that we miss her very much.
Jean welcomes me into the church before leaving to spend time with her family. It's a place of many carvings and gargoyles, including the cat emblem of the Catesby family who originally endowed it. The Catesbys came in many varieties, and there'll be different tales to tell of the branch of the family which lived out west at Ashby St. Ledgers. But this eastern lot were Puritans and during the 17thC Whiston was probably something of a fire and brimstone place. The pews are wonderfully aged, although I'm not sure about their comfort-rating were the preaching to become prolix.
Some years ago down in the little village I saw the only adder I've ever encountered in Northamptonshire. It was dead, mind you, in fact rather rolled flat, but nevertheless definitely an adder, and I'm fairly sure it hadn't been placed there as a wind-up - unlike the tarantula I once found sitting on the counter of the now defunct Midland Bank in the Wellingborough Road. Gave me a bit of a shock though. And the bank clerk.
At this point I should probably have done the obvious thing and walked the shorter way back to Ecton. Instead I made foolish tracks towards Earls Barton, hedging my bets as to whether I'd finish the day with a visit to the great Anglo-Saxon church there, and thinking that I'd easily find the entrance to the field path that runs parallel to the main road back to Ecton. But energy ran out, so I decided to leave EB for another day. Then, without the relevant OS Explorer, I managed to miss the path. So the day ended with a long, hot and dusty trek beside the traffic. I'm slowly learning to find merit in any walk, but truthfully there wasn't much in this section, except the company of a couple of red kites. I've seen one go for a chicken before now. Sometime soon there'll be a silly season tabloid story about an attack on a human (as a variation on the usual gull meme). Not for this reason, but it was a relief to reach Ecton church and the car.
Stats man: 14 miles. 7.5 hrs. 21 degrees: beautiful walking weather. One great pub discovery. Three open churches (one assisted: thank you Eddie!) One church clock stuck on mid-day. Lots of small dogs. Three red kites (when will they reach Weston Favell?).
Great Father of us all
Jesus commanded us to
'Judge not, lest we be judged'.
Sometimes I wonder then how
I can say anything at all?
Isn't all life judging?
When I'm driving
I need to assess
Whether the bloke in that car
Is off his head.
When I'm walking in the city
I need to be aware
Of who's walking too close behind me.
When I'm having breakfast
In Carluccio's
These days I'm waiting
For a shout of 'Allahu Akhbar'
And wondering exactly how
To hit the floor
When the moment comes.
So how do I not judge?
Give me grace, Father
To notice and not to criticise:
To see with discernment
And not routinely think ill of others:
To entertain by my words
But to do it in kindly fashion:
In fact to be a bit more like Olive.
I ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
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